COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — Ten years ago, Ozy Licano found himself in the crosshairs of gunfire.
Licano needed to run an errand from his home in Rocky Ford to the Costco in Colorado Springs, his neighbors asked for a ride as one of them had an appointment at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood.
He was looking at his phone inside his car when all of a sudden he heard what he described as a commotion.
“Watching it unfold was like, how hideous can a human being be to do that?” Licano said.
He looked up and saw a man crawling through the entryway of the Planned Parenthood, glass shattering around him.
“I’m like, what? I was so confused,” Licano said.
Then he saw a different man, this one with a gun.
“I saw him walking up, just marching like a robot,” Licano said, “I was confused and I kept hearing the shots inside.”
He got out of the car, trying to figure out what was going on, and then got back inside, and backed out of the parking lot.
“As I turned, there he was,” Licano said, “he was looking at me and he was aiming and then he just started firing and I just gunned it and I was able to get out and go.”
Licano says the air was filled with gunpowder as he saw his windshield crack. One of the bullets narrowly missed Licano.
“The last one of the last bullets kind of landed right in my seat. Just barely missed my kidney by, like, two inches,” Licano said.
“It's kind of weird, you know, how] you see in the movies how the evil people, their pupils turn black or the whole eyeball turn? That's what happened with him when I saw him,” Licano said.
Licano drove to a nearby King Soopers, leaving his car riddled with bullets and his face peppered from glass shards. He remembers looking into his rearview mirror and seeing “blood spurting out”, but he didn’t know where it was coming from.
“I got to that King Soopers and got out, and I think I thought I said, I think I've been hit, I don't know…apparently my blood pressure is just so high from the excitement, and I had had cut my lip and that's what was bleeding,” Licano said.
Licano said he sat inside of that King Soopers while an off-duty nurse tended to his wounds. Afterwards, he was taken to the hospital and released later that day.
It wasn’t until later that Licano found out how many people were hurt. Those killed include: University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) Police Officer, Garrett Swasey, Iraq War Veteran Ke’Arre M. Stewart, and a mother and wife of two, Jennifer Markovsky. Nine other people were also shot, including five police officers.
10 years later, Licano is still trying to wrap his head around how he survived.
“Why them and not me? I don't understand. It just doesn't seem fair,” Licano said.
After a 5-hour standoff, law enforcement officials arrested 57-year-old, Robert Dear. Since then, his competency has remained in question, keeping the case from going to trial.
Licano attended the first couple court proceedings. During one of the hearings, Licano said he yelled at Dear.
“I think I called him an inbred and, you know, and he's stupid and, you know, driven by a stupid religion. You can't decide to take people's lives like that. You're never going to get away from this,” Licano said.
A decade later, he’s still trying to make sense of several questions, including why the case has not gone to trial.
“He was competent enough to do and think about all the details and actually take lives. He was competent in all of that to decide to do that and carry it out. What now all of a sudden he's not competent and we have to feed him and pay for his existence,” Licano said.
Licano said he doesn’t think much about the shooting, but he thinks of the victims and wrestles with the guilt of wondering if he could have done more.
“I just felt helpless. I wish I could have just grabbed him and did something, you know, but I couldn't,” Licano said
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